IFP Conference June 6-8 moved to bigger venue

As the IFP Conference in Lisbon June 6-8 already sold out the 40 seat auditorium, thanks to the flexibility of NavPortugal we can announce that we moved the event accross the road to Nav's main building to an 80-seat auditorium.
This is great news because we still have a number of interested people who would like to participate.
An update on confirmed speakers:
Nils Lundström of GeomaticSolutions, Rapporteur of the IFPP CRM Working Group will speak about the Collision Risk Model work that is going on and will explain a few important things regarding obstacle modelling and number of obstacles used in a CRM run. Then we have Martin Zillig, Lufthansa Systems and ANI ARINC 424 instructor, who will inform us about the choice of ARINC 424 leg types in a combined PBN/ILS environment. To follow this up, Patrice Rouquette, Avionics Engineer at Airbus will explain the aircraft systems behaviour in the same environment. Procedure Design related we have a couple of real-world examples shown from Romano Germann, ANI Services Chief Designer regarding a Flight Procedure in ectremely complex terrain, as well as an example of a PinS Helicopter project. Romon Solé, IFP Designer at Pildo Labs will present another PinS example in complex terrain. Finally Frank Lumnitzer, Captain at Condor Airlines will present operational issues from the cockpit perspective in a PBN environment.

We still have a couple of slots to be allocated. We certainly want to have a speach about practical PBN implementation, as that is one of the burning topics today. Personally I just wanted to moderate the event but depending on what will be going on at the IFPP meeting in two weeks, I might be doing a briefing as well. All in all I want this to be an exchange of ideas for people in the procedure design domain and everybody should leave Lisbon satisfied and with the wish to have such an event on a regular basis.
Updated info file here.

New: Flight Validation Practical Module

As far as I am concerned this is a milestone achievement. We always thought that the Flight Validation Pilot Course could do with some kind of practical module. ANI Services Chief Designer Romano Germann delivered the first such practical in the helicopter simulator in December in Zürich. The feedback was excellent.
Now we are able to offer the same for fixed wing pilots. The ANI established a cooperation with Lufthansa and appointed the four instructors Josef Anschau, Pascal Wegmann, Emre Gümüs and Pieter-Bas Oortman. They teach the new 4-day Flight Validation Practical Module that will be held September 4-8 (Monday afternoon to Friday midday) in the Lufthansa Simulator Center at Frankfurt Airport. It is an optional module but highly recommended. The rundown of the course will be that participants will get a flight procedure report to start with, which they have to work through and do the analysis of the impact on Flight OPS (the so called pre-flight validation). Then they will establish a plan how to perform the flight validation, specific issues to check etc. on the third day of the course the participants will fly the procedure in a simulator. We cannot guarantee which one, it could be anyone in the Airbus 3xx family including the Airbus 380. At the end, a validation report is produced. There will also be information on recording and post-treatment of recorded data.
I strongly believe that this was the missing jigsaw in an already good training program and will help that future Flight Validation Pilots come out of the course more confident and up to speed with what will be required from them.
Expensive you think? Maybe that is the best part: we are able to offer that module for CHF 3000 per participant. Again, we are talking a full shebang airline simulator we will be using for this.

There will be another course held at the same location aimed to help Flight Procedure Designers to understand Flight OPS. It will also include simulator time, but let me announce that separately when we agreed on the dates for that one.

IFP Conference Lisbon, June 6-8 2017 - Registration open!

Dear All,

As previously announced the above event will be organized by us and we open the registration for the event now. Again, this is not a commercial operation, the participation fee is charged for the organization and the overhead cost. The participation fee is 300€ per participant for the event as a whole or partly. Please note that we only have 40 seats available, the conference is likely to sell out quickly. You can download a brochure and a registration form.

As you can see in the info brochure, we also have reserved two speaking slots of 20 minutes for participants. People who think that they have an interesting issue/topic to share and discuss with the community can ask us for the slot. We will decide based on our own absolutely biased and non-neutral judgement.

Potential presenters please note the following:
You MUST go through the presentation technique lecture of ANI first.
The slot of 20 minutes MUST not be stretched. If you go too long, we will cut you off. As a rule of thumb you can count 7 to maximum 10 slides if you use presentation software.
DON'T EVEN THINK about using bullet lists or more than 20 words per slide. If the presentation means anything without you speaking, it is not a good presentation. You are the show, not the slides.

We will capture hot topics in the conference proceedings and make sure they get fed into the correct channels (ICAO, Eurocontrol, EASA etc.) as appropriate.

International IFP Conference Lisbon, June 6-8, 2017

Dear All,

The ANI organizes a small conference for Flight Procedure Design to allow some exchange of ideas, discussions. This will be held in Lisbon in the Training Center of Nav Portugal near the Airport. It is not meant to be a commercial operation for us, we will however charge a participation fee to cover the overhead for the organization of the event. No worries, it will not be high and we shall communicate it as soon as we open the registration.
Important: It is not a large event, we have 40 seats, so early booking will be crucial. First come, first served. Also we deliberately did not shop for any sponsorship.

Those who know me will be aware that I am not a big fan of "death by Powerpoint". So I will make sure the speakers on stage will be people who have understood my lecture "presentation technique", which is avalable for free on the ANI website.

I foresee the speaking slots to be 20 minutes long and we will make sure NOBODY tries to put in like 90 slides in that period (20 minutes allows for 7 to 10 slides for someone who has understood didactics...). Then we will have a moderated discussion period about the topic of equal length. At such events often I see too much time allocated for some speaker and not enough to discuss.

Good. Reserve the dates already if you with to participate, I will work on the program and annonce as soon as registration will open.

ARINC 424 Spring 2017

I am approached by a number of people regarding the next ARINC 424. Here is the plan: Tentative dates at the moment are May 8-12. This is immediately after the advanced PBN fixed wing course and in parallel with the Heli PinS course. This allows people interested in the advanced PBN and the ARINC to do both with one trip. The folks joining for the Heli PinS will be able to enjoy some joint sessions with the ARINC 424 class.
I am currently coordinating this with the instructors. Likely, Jim Terpstra will be lecturing the ARINC 424. I keep you posted.

ANI Services GmbH - Procedure Design Consultancy

Due to the growing demand for flight procedures worldwide, mainly in the PBN domain, but also in Helicopter operations, the Air Navigation Institute founded a subsidiary company, the ANI Services at the end of 2015. As Chief Flight Procedure Designer, one of the most competent and experienced Flight Procedure Designers in Europe could be hired. In the first year of operation, the company already became very busy, leading a large project for PinS procedures at 14 locations and having designed the procedures and assisted the project management for Samedan airport, where the goal is to fly the new approach and departure procedures temporarily at the alpine ski world championships in February 2017.
The workload became so large that we will have another experienced Flight Procedure Designer starting on January 1 2017 with the team. In that light we also decided that a dedicated website for the subsidiary company should be launched. Here it is. It is quite rudimentary at this time and we have some added value planned for the near future. Stuff that is valuable and can be downloaded for free. Important is, that stakeholders are aware that ANI Services can offer such consultancy services worldwide. Due to regulatory issues in some countries this is only possible as a sub-contractor of course.

ANI Harder Challenge update

After 7 years we can announce that the record established by Andreas Edvardsen has finally been broken. Toralf Stubbe from airsight GmbH in Berlin established a new best of 40' 30". Two weeks before Johan Nordlund from Swedish Air Ambulance entered top three with 45' 59". He is no longer top 3 obviously...

Together with Toralf we have two more guys who have cracked the one hour limit: Kuba Dziumak from PANSA with 52' 55' and Miklos Altoray from Hungarocontrol with 59' 36". Good stuff guys and as always it shows that ANI course participants are not only clever but also fit :-)

ANI Harder Challenge update

After 7 years we can announce that the record established by Andreas Edvardsen has finally been broken. Toraf Stubbe from airsight GmbH in Berlin established a new best of 40' 30". Two weeks before Johan Nordlund from Swedish Air Ambulance entered top three with 45' 59". He is no longer top 3 obviously...

Together with Toralf we have two more guys who have cracked the one hour limit: Kuba Dziumak from PANSA with 52' 55' and Miklos Altoray from Hungarocontrol with 59' 36". Good stuff guys and as always it shows that ANI course participants are not only clever but also fit :-)

ARINC 424 with Jim Terpstra - last opportunity

One month to go until we start the ARINC 424 navigation database course with Jim Terpstra as an instructor (May 23-29). This is the last chance to register for this course. If you want to understand PBN as a concept you also need to understand databases and avionics behaviour. The chances to learn directly from Mr. Database become rarer now. Here is one, don' miss it.

ANI Harder Challenge update

Dear ANI Students and Friends,

The winter will soon be over, the course semester has started and the first people are mentally getting ready to tackle the challenge. This is a good moment to give you an update.
We had a very competitive year 2015. There were five competitors that finished in under an hour, which made me lose my number 3 spot in the all time ranking.
Best of the year 2015 is Dan Bensoussan from the Israel Air Force with atime of 44' 20". The all time record however still remains untouched and could be difficult to even come close. Andreas Melsom Edvardsen from Avinor in Oslo is still the all time number one with 42' 46". Dan's comment was: "I have no clue where on the track I could be even a minute faster!" :-D
Timings are published on the restricted area for students on the ANI website.

Two more Flight Procedure Designer positions in Sweden

One at the service provider LFV and one at the regulator Transportstyrelsen. Both of them are in Norrköping/Sweden.

Details for the LFV one:
https://candidate.hr-manager.net/ApplicationInit.aspx?cid=217&ProjectId=188316&DepartmentId=11045&MediaId=3568




Details for the regulator position:

The position is as “Senior Adviser Airspace”.

You will

·         take part in the strategic planning for the use of the Swedish Airspace

·         take part in the development of new rules

·         check and approve applications for airspace and flight procedure design

·         have contact with providers in ANS and airspace and procedure design, aircraft operators, authorities

You must

·         have good knowledge about airspace design and use, both military and civil

·         have at least five years experience within the area

·         have good knowledge in English, spoken and written

·         have good knowledge in Swedish, spoken and written , or the capability to learn Swedish quite fast

Further information is available through Head of the section for Air Navigation Services, Mrs Ann-Sofi Lorefält.

e-mail: Ann-sofi.Lorefalt@transportstyrelsen.se

Phone: +46 10 495 37 05

Training year 2015 completed

On Friday the 19th, we released participants from Germany, Hungary, South Africa, Crroation, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, United Kingdom and Israel from the last PANS-OPS basic of the year. For the time being we are going on fesive hibernation. On January 5, Romano will start his job as Chief Designer with ANI. In the mean time, I'll be doing this:

Next advanced PBN fixed wing course

The advanced PBN fixed wing had to be re-scheduled. It now takes place May 23 to June 3, 2016.

Another Procedure Designer vacancy

Hi All,

In New Zealand we are again looking for an experienced designer to join our team in 2016. We have a lot of existing New Zealand and Pacific Island approaches to look after along with a world leading PBN implementation programme across the Pacific and growing international work. Airways have partnered with Group EAD to further expand our procedure design services.

If you are interested click on the link below or cut and paste if that doesn't work. http://groupead.com/working-with-us/car ... rtunities/

If you have any queries you are welcome to contact me at:

greg.perris@groupead.co.nz

Next AIS/MAP course is scheduled

We have scheduled the AIS/MAP course for 2016 as follows:

October 17-28, 2016
Venue: University of Zürich, Center for Continuing Education
http://www.zwb.uzh.ch/en.html

Instructor is as always for this course Aleksandar Pavlovic.

Important note to Flight Procedure Designers:

Don't (DO NOT!) design Helicopter PinS procedures without any training. This is too critical. PinS is not something you understand by just reading the criteria chapter, especially not if you never flew a helicopter yourself.

Flight Procedure Designer vacancy at skyguide Geneva

Dear all,
Here is an opportunity to apply for an IFP designer position at skyguide in Geneva/Switzerland. Details can be found here.

ANI launches some merchandise

Due to relatively frequent demand, we decided to launch a few merchandise articles. Right now we have softshell jackets (Russell), Fleece Jackets (Icewalker), T-Shirts and Victorinox Swiss Army Knives. Please note that the garments are high quality and made to order. The jackets have the ANI logo stitched (not printed) on the back and on the left breast. The T-Shirts are printed. Check the ANI Merchandise page for info.
We wear the stuff ourselves, so we thought maybe you like them too.

Procedure Designer position in Sweden

Dear All,

There is a job opening for a trained Flight Procedure Designer i Sweden. Details can be found here:  https://delta.hr-manager.net/ApplicationInit.aspx?cid=217&departmentId=11045&ProjectId=188316&MediaId=3567

The doubtful reasons of tenders/bids when there is a very limited number of service providers

Let's picture the following scenario: There are two supermarkets that carry the products you need. But you have a preference and you really want to buy from supermarket A. Now you go there and tell them "here is a list of products we need to buy. We need you to complete this paperwork, stating all the article prices in our local currency. You also must attach (as opposed to: please also attach) a copy of your trade certificate and a CV of your managing director as well as the lady on the cashier. We will then award the contract to you". Total nonsense you say? Fully agree, but this is really what we have to put up with sometimes. The excuse is usually that it is required by law to proceed like that. Fine, all that means is that the law is wrong and needs to be changed.
If you have two training organisations in the world (a third one being on hold due to temporary admin issues), offering exactly what you need and are required to book because of ICAO requirements, there is only ONE procedure to be followed: Ask if there are places available and if so, book by going through the admission process of the service provider. Period.